TurnKey Ruby on Rails Live CD is an open source appliance designed from the ground up for users who want and easy and painless method for deploying dedicated servers with the Ruby on Rails web application framework.

It uses the stable and reliable base from the award winning Debian GNU/Linux operating system. Ruby on Rails is an open source web application framework that is highly optimized for sustainable productivity and programmer happiness.

The appliance comes with the RubyGems package manager, which can be used for managing Rails components (also known as gems), the APT package manager for installing, updating and removing software packages, as well as the build-essentials package for building gems.

It also features all of the upstream Ruby on Rails configuration with the mod_rails Apache module, pre-configured example Rails app deployed in /var/www/railsapp, as well as a capable MySQL database server for testing, development and production of web apps.

Additionally, this TurnKey edition features support for secure connections using SSL, Ruby Enterprise for improved memory and performance utilization, as well as various Webmin modules for configuring the Apache and MySQL servers.

The default username for the MySQL, Webmin, and SSH components is root. Users will be able to enter a new password for the root (system administrator) and the MySQL 'root' account during the first boot configuration process.

The TurnKey Ruby on Rails appliance is distributed as Live CD ISO images, which can be used to install the operating system on a local disk drive, as well as to just try it without installing anything on your computer.

In addition to the Live CDs, the appliance is also available for download as virtual images in the OpenStack, Xen, OVF, OpenNode and OpenVZ formats directly from the project's homepage (see above).

Don't forget to write down the IP addresses and ports of the active services, at the end of the installation process, which takes place in the Linux console (text-mode) and requires users to only partition the disk drive and install the bootloader.

TurnKey Ruby on Rails Live CD was reviewed by Marius Nestor, last updated on April 26th, 2014